Peter Middlebrook: Wandering minstrel on a mission

Nov, 22, 2012

"After three years you think, at some point this will probably have to stop," he recalls.
And yet it never really has. A career of more than 25 years spanning diplomacy to political economics has taken him to work in more than 40 countries.
Many of those have been fragile or post-c...Read full story

Women in Leadership Forum China

Sep, 15, 2012

Since 2009, the Women In Leadership (WIL) series has brought together over 2,500 successful business leaders from around the world to encourage real actions that maximize women's contributions towards economic growth through inspirational conference sessions and business networking platforms. ...Read full story

Corruption in Afghanistan threatens long term development, peace and security. The Kabul Bank debacle demonstrates the weakness of Afghan authorities to enforce regulatory regimes and the corruption that supports a patronage system that can oft...Read full story

European Union governments imposed sanctions on Tuesday against major Iranian state companies in the oil and gas industry, and strengthened restrictions on the central bank, cranking up financial pressure over Tehran's nuclear program. More than 30 f...Read full story

Brilliant overview of the different values of 'time' by Philip Zimbardo. Sure, we all experience time in different ways, depending on our cultural values, economic ideology, idiosyncratic circumstances, life phase, religious beliefs and histori...Read full story

The much talked about 2014 US Security Drawdown from Afghanistan could have dire, if not catastrophic implications for the Afghan economy; contraction, current account deficits, balance of payments crisis, fiscal policy and even high unemployment. &n...Read full story

See our story on the BBC. My company Geopolicity has been leading research into the economics of piracy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13392537
Piracy off the Somali coast costs the international community up to $8.3bn (£5.1bn) a...Read full story

The surge in piracy from a low base in 2007 has taken the world by surprise. With the average pirate working for 3-5 years, and with an annual income of over US$100,000 based on recent research we have conducted, the income differentiation between pi...Read full story

Few other countries have been through the birth pains that have been epitomized by Southern Sudan. The scars of civilian conflict and bitter internecine fighting will take a generation or more to heal, yet the results of the January 9, 2011 referendu...Read full story

The war in Afghanistan has tested NATO’s strategic alliance considerably over the course of the last decade. The war was frequently described - somewhat mistakenly - as the war that came close to putting a nail in its coffin; given the difficul...Read full story

War does not determine who is right - only who is left!
Last week a number of Israeli’s were killed by Palestinian’s and a number of Palestinian’s were killed by Israelis. An vicious cycle of loss leading to ever more loss, with ...Read full story

The biggest threat facing the UK on the security front, like that of NATO itself, is no longer territorial, rather it is ideological. Indeed, economic security is the biggest threat to a waning empire, with economic contraction on one side and the ne...Read full story

President Hamid Karzai would appear to face the unenviable task of keeping the Afghan national assembly, his ex-Mujahedeen backers and the international community on the same page - a challenge far too reminiscent of other periods in Afghanistan&rsqu...Read full story

Yes indeed the demand for the Greenback remains strong, at the moment, for a multitude of reasons. The first is that the entire global trade regime, including the terms that underpin it, was established on the back of the Second World War; a war that...Read full story

What you gain on the swings you are inevitably going to loose on the roundabouts. Yet for some reason many in the US think that its total wealth of an economy (GNP) is more than the sum of its many parts; the people. It is simply not possible to cont...Read full story

The current recession is not only forcing the re-calibration of global capital relations it is also shaping the political leadership in many strategically important countries too. The impact on foreign relations and geopolitical alignment may in some...Read full story

Toxicity is the degree to which a substance (such as nuclear wast, alcohol, drugs, derivatives etc.) is able to damage an exposed organism; in this case consumers of financial products. However, that high street Banks themselves have now become activ...Read full story

Created on the 1st of May 1707, as the once largest empire in history and the first industrial state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain has certainly been an important player in world affairs. That all Time Zones start in Greenwich London need not ...Read full story

The ripple effect of the ‘global’ financial crisis will likely erode the shores of once affluent economies for decades to come. Furthermore, it is going to take a lot more than a Keynesian sleight of hand to correct two decades of easy mo...Read full story

Biography

Peter J. Middlebrook is an international relations expert, political economist and emerging market specialist. A former staff member of the World Bank, UK Government, European Union and United Nations, he has worked on more than 40 countries and trav...Read full story